The son of a prosperous Massachusetts merchant, King studied law before volunteering for the militia in the American Revolutionary War. He won election to the Massachusetts General Court in 1783 and to the Congress of the Confederation the following year. At the 1787 Philadelphia Convention, he emerged as a leading nationalist, calling for increased powers for the federal government. After the convention, King returned to Massachusetts, where he used his influence to help win ratification of the new Constitution. At the urging of Alexander Hamilton, he then abandoned his law practice and moved to New York City.

King was the informal de facto Federalist nominee for president in 1816, losing in a landslide to James Monroe. The Federalist Party became defunct at the national level after 1816, and King was the last presidential nominee the party fielded. Nonetheless, King was able to remain in the Senate until 1825, making him the last Federalist senator, due to a split in the New York Democratic-Republican Party. After that King accepted John Quincy Adams's appointment to serve another term as ambassador to Britain, but ill health forced King to retire from public life, and he died in 1827. King had five children who lived to adulthood, and he has numerous notable descendants.

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He was born on March 24, 1755, at Scarborough, which was then a part of Massachusetts but is now in the state of Maine.[1] He was a son of Isabella (Bragdon) and Richard King, a prosperous farmer-merchant, "lumberman, and sea captain"[1] who had settled at Dunstan Landing in Scarborough, near Portland, Maine, and had made a modest fortune by 1755, the year Rufus was born. His financial success aroused the jealousy of his neighbors, and when the Stamp Act 1765 was imposed, and rioting became almost respectable, a mob ransacked his house and destroyed most of the furniture. Nobody was punished, and the next year the mob burned down his barn.[2] This statement proves true as John Adams once referenced this moment discussing limitations of the "mob" for the Constitutional Convention writing a letter to his wife Abigail and describing the scene as:

I am engaged in a famous Cause: The Cause of King, of Scarborough vs. a Mob, that broke into his House, and rifled his Papers, and terrifyed him, his Wife, Children and Servants in the Night. The Terror, and Distress, the Distraction and Horror of this Family cannot be described by Words or painted upon Canvass. It is enough to move a Statue, to melt an Heart of Stone, to read the Story....[3] It was not surprising that Richard King became a loyalist. All of his sons, however, became patriots in the American War of Independence.[2]

In 1787, King was sent to the Constitutional Convention held at Philadelphia. King held a significant position at the convention. Despite his youthful stature, “he numbered among the most capable orators”. Along with James Madison, “he became a leading figure in the nationalist causus”. Furthermore, he attended every session. King’s “views underwent a startling transformation during the debates” originally changing a mindset supporting Articles of Confederation and utterly throwing out the idea that it could be sustained.[4] King’s major involvements included serving on the Committee on Postponed Matters and the Committee of Style and Arrangement.[4] Although he came to the convention unconvinced that major changes should be made in the Articles of Confederation, his views underwent a startling transformation during the debates.[4] He worked with Chairman William Samuel Johnson, James Madison, Gouverneur Morris, and Alexander Hamilton on the Committee of Style and Arrangement to prepare a final draft of the United States Constitution. King is one of the more prominent delegates namely because of playing “a major role in the laborious crafting of the fundamental governing character.[9] The constitution was signed on September 17, only needing to be ratified by each of the subsequent states.[9] After signing the Constitution, he returned home and went to work to get the Constitution ratified and unsuccessfully position himself to be named to the U.S. Senate.[10] The ratification passed by the narrow margin of 187–168 votes.[9] With the ratification passed, Massachusetts “became the sixth state to ratify [the] constitution in early February 1788.[9] Rufus is indirectly responsible for the passing of this ratification seeing that his “learned, informative, and persuasive speeches” were able to convince a “popular, vain merchant and prince-turned-politicians to abandon his anti-federalism and approve the new organic law”.[9]

After his early political experiences during the constitutional convention, King decided to switch his vocational calling by “[abandoning] his law practice [in 1788], [and] moved from the Bay State to Gotham, and entered the New York political forum”.[4] At Hamilton's urging, he moved to New York City, and was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1789.[8] Shortly afterwards he was elected as Senator from New York and reelected in 1795. In 1795, King helped Hamilton defend the controversial Jay Treaty by writing pieces for New York newspapers under the pseudonym "Camillus." Of the thirty eight installments in the series, King wrote eight, numbers 23–30, 34, and 35, discussing the treaty's maritime and commercial aspects.[11] He was re-elected in 1795 but resigned on May 23, 1796, having been appointed U. S. Minister by George Washington to Great Britain.[4][8][12] "Even though King was an outspoken Federalist politically, Republican President Thomas Jefferson, upon his elevation to the presidency, refused to recall him. In 1803, King voluntarily relinquished...." this position.[12]

King then returned to elected politics, for a long time with little success, but later he returned to the Senate. In April 1804, King ran unsuccessfully for the Senate from New York. Later that year, and again in 1808, King and fellow-signer Charles Cotesworth Pinckney were the candidates for Vice President and President of the declining Federalist Party, respectively, but had no realistic chance against Democratic Republican Thomas Jefferson with only 27.2% of the popular vote, losing by 45.6%, marking the highest recess in Presidential election history. In 1808 both candidates were renominated and lost against James Madison, gaining 32.4% this time.[4]

In September 1812, when the unpopular War of 1812 against Great Britain helped the opposing Federalists to regain reputation, King led an effort at the Federalist party caucus to nominate a Federalist ticket for the presidential election that year, but the effort failed, as Democratic Republican DeWitt Clinton had the best chances to defeat his fellow party member Madison, which made the Federalists field no candidate. However, some sought to make King the nominee, in order to have a candidate under the Federalist banner on the ballot, and though little came of it, he did finish third in the popular vote with approximately 2% of the total. Shortly thereafter, King celebrated his first success after 10 years, when he was elected to his "second tenure on Senate" in 1813.[12]

In April 1816 he ran for Governor of New York and lost to Daniel D. Tompkins. In the fall of that year, he did become the informal presidential nominee for the Federalist Party, as they did not meet for any convention. He only received 30.9% and lost again, this time to James Monroe, whose running mate, coincidentally, was Tompkins.[12] King would be the last presidential candidate by the Federalists before their collapse. When he ran for re-election to the Senate in 1819, he ran as a Federalist even though the party was already disbanding and had only a small minority in the New York State Legislature. But, due to the split of the Democratic-Republicans, no successor was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1819, and the seat remained vacant until January 1820. Trying to attract the former Federalist voters to their side at the next gubernatorial election in April 1820, both factions of the Democratic-Republican Party now supported King, who served another term in the U.S. Senate until March 4, 1825. At the time the Federalist Party had already ceased to exist on the federal stage. During his second tenure in the Senate, he continued his career as an opponent of slavery, which he denounced as anathema to the principles underlying the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In what is considered the greatest speech of his career, he spoke against admitting Missouri as a slave state in 1820.

Soon after his second term in the Senate ended, King was appointed Minister to Great Britain again, this time by President John Quincy Adams. But he was forced to return home a few months later due to failing health. He subsequently retired from public life.[12]

King played a major diplomatic role as Minister to the Court of St. James from 1796 to 1803, and again from 1825 to 1826.[13] Although he was a leading Federalist, Thomas Jefferson kept him in office until King asked to be relieved.[12] Some prominent accomplishments that King had from his time as a national diplomat include a term of friendly relations with Britain and the United States (at least until it became hostile in 1805).[4] With that in mind, he was able to successfully reach a compromise on the passing of the Jay Treaty being an avid supporter of it.[4] King was outspoken against potential Irish immigration to the United States in wake of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. In a September 13, 1798 letter to the Duke of Portland, King said of potential Irish refugees, "I certainly do not think they will be a desirable acquisition to any Nation, but in none would they be likely to prove more mischievous than in mine, where from the sameness of language and similarity of Laws and Institutions they have greater opportunities of propagating their principles than in any other Country."[14] Also, while in Britain, he was in close personal contact with South American revolutionary Francisco de Miranda and facilitated Miranda's trip to the United States in search of support for his failed 1806 expedition to Venezuela.

King had a long history of opposition to the expansion of slavery and the slave trade. This stand was a product of moral conviction which coincided with the political realities of New England federalism. While in Congress, he successfully added provisions to the 1787 Northwest Ordinance which barred the extension of slavery into the Northwest Territory. [7] But he also said he was willing "to suffer the continuance of slaves until they can be gradually emancipated in states already overrun with them." He did not press the issue very hard at this time. At the Constitutional Convention, he indicated that his opposition to slavery was based upon the political and economic advantages it gave to the South, but he was willing to compromise for political reasons. In 1817, he supported Senate action to abolish the domestic slave trade and, in 1819, spoke strongly for the antislavery amendment to the Missouri statehood bill. In 1819, his arguments were political, economic, and humanitarian; the extension of slavery would adversely affect the security of the principles of freedom and liberty. After the Missouri Compromise, he continued to support gradual emancipation in various ways. [15]

At the time of his death in 1827, King had a library of roughly 2,200 titles in 3,500 volumes. In addition, King had roughly 200 bound volumes containing thousands of pamphlets. King's son John Alsop King inherited the library and kept them in Jamaica, Queens, until his death in 1867. The books then went to John's son Dr. Charles Ray King of Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They remained in Pennsylvania until donated to the New-York Historical Society in 1906, where most of them currently reside. Some books have extensive marginalia. In addition, six commonplace books survive in his papers at the New-York Historical Society.

Many of King's family were also involved in politics and he had a number of prominent descendants. His brother William King was the first governor of Maine and a prominent merchant, and his other brother, Cyrus King, was a U.S. Representative from Massachusetts.

Mrs. King was a lady of remarkable beauty, gentle and gracious manners, and well cultivated mind, and adorned the high station, both in England and at home, that her husband's official positions and their own social relations entitled them to occupy.[18] A King family member once wrote to their wife of Mrs. King's beauty and personality as, "'Tell Betsy King [Rufus's half-sister] her sister is a beauty. She is vastly the best looking woman I have seen since I have been in this city....She is a good hearted woman, and, I think, possesses all that Benevolence and kind, friendly disposition, that never fail to find respectable admirers'".[18] As mentioned earlier her "remarkable beauty" and "well cultivated manner" seems to help the Kings in the type of lifestyle they lives, one where the Kings found themselves in "fashionable circles and entertained frequently"...(potentially helped by how "[Mrs. King] was widely admired in New York society; her retiring nature set her apart.").[18] The Kings found themselves having 7 children (of which 5 managed to live to adulthood).[18] On June 5, 1819, Mrs. King died. "She was buried in the old churchyard of Grace Church". Rufus King remarked on her death regarding his wife, "The example of her life is worthy of the imitation of us all".[19]

Rufus King died on April 29, 1827, and his funeral was held at his New York home in Jamaica, Queens. He is buried in the Grace Church Cemetery in Jamaica, Queens, New York. [20] The home that King purchased in 1805 and expanded thereafter and some of his farm make up King Park in Queens. The home, called King Manor, is now a museum and is open to the public.